Decolonisation and Transformation of Higher Education in South Africa: The Case of Rhodes University

Professor Robert van Niekerk from Rhodes University will deliver this Sussex Development Lecture on Decolonisation and Transformation of Higher Education in South Africa

Professor Robert van Niekerk, Professor of Social Policy at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, will compare and contrast the response of students, academic staff, support workers and senior administrators ('stakeholder') at Rhodes University, an historically white academic institution in South Africa, to the Feesmustfall protests in 2015 and 2016 and the campaign to decolonise the university from its apartheid (and post-apartheid) legacies.

Robert's area of research is the institutional history, ideologies and understandings of social policy and social change in South Africa. He also has an interest in social policy in a post-apartheid South Africa – particularly polices aimed at overcoming inequality and developing social rights of citizenship and the ‘good society’, and looking at the factors that account for success and failure in policy implementation.